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Check out this new coffee gadget from Ember Technologies. The new company that exists to make the simple act of eating and drinking more gratifying through temperature control, announced the release of its flagship product today: the only temperature adjustable mug that keeps coffee or tea at a consistent temperature.Using patented heating and phase change […]

Should smartphone manufacturers worry about the new Indiegogo project from Saygus called the V SQUARED phone? Maybe…the Saygus V SQUARED could be a massive disruptor in the smartphone industry. These guys are bringing us the world’s first no-compromise smartphone. The company is boasting 15 exclusive features and technologies new to the market in one device. […]

Today I decided to take a semi-day off from all things technology. In reality I knew I couldn’t seriously take a day off from tech. So I started surfing Indiegogo for TechGeniux tech stories. I came across a neat little project called Musio. What is Musio you ask? Musio is an artificially intelligent (A.I.) robot […]

Let me introduce everyone to the new Indiegogo project called the Connected Pedal from the team of Connected Cycle. The Connected Pedal is the first autonomous smart pedal that has a built-in GPS tracker to prevent thief and automatically record your rides. Other nice features include an energy generator, built-in internet connection and activity tracker […]

Today I came across a new tech device on my Twitter feed. The product is called the Neptune Hub or Neptune Suite. With one computing hub that’s on your wrist at all times, and many other devices that are simply accessories for your wrist, Neptune Suite allows you to be the center of your computing […]

Today let’s take a look at the top 5 crowdfunding websites. First, let’s obtain an understanding on what crowdfunding is and how it can be beneficial for you. Crowdfunding is a system or platforms that allow everyday people with limited funds to raise funds for an idea, project or charity requirements to successfully raise funds. […]

Today I want to share a very interesting new crowdfunding project on Indiegogo. It’s called the Quell. The first pain relief wearable device to help to relieve pain. The Quell wearable seem simple to use and apply to injured or sore areas of the body. Simply wrap and snap the Quell around your upper calf […]

Today we have a very unique device called the Pixsso. The Pixsso is a 4.4” always-on electronic paper display to provide relevant information anywhere you want. You can literally stick it to any wall, desk, to-dos, and messages on your fridge. Do you display the tacky paper notes from the kid’s school events and doctor […]

The Sondors Electric Bike has been touted as one of the most versatile and affordable electric bike of all times! With its powerful 350 watt motor, this amazing ebike is ready to change the bike marketplace and this is together with speeds of up to 20mph with all terrain tires. The ebike applies […]

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Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.
In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.
So today, SearchInk rebrands as omni:us, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: omni:us Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.
Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.
Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”
She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”
Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.
Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.
... Read More

VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.
‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have global ambitions.
Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.
I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.
Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (formerly known as CityStasher) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.
Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.
Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.
The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that sold to Daimler in February 2017.
... Read More

Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.
In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.
So today, SearchInk rebrands as omni:us, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: omni:us Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.
Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.
Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”
She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”
Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.
Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.
... Read More

VentureFriends, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of Homie and Weengs, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.
‘VentureFriends II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its original €20 million fund left off, with a remit to do seed investments in Greek startups and beyond that have global ambitions.
Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.
I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.
Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (formerly known as CityStasher) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.
Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.
Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.
The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that sold to Daimler in February 2017.
... Read More

<p>Back in 2016 a startup called SearchInk, launched out of Berlin with the aim of combining machine learning with handwriting recognition. The upshot would be the ability to semantically label handwritten documents. Pretty nifty. It went on to raise €4.2 million in seed funding, but after developing this AI to read hard-written documents, it went in search of a market and business model. Not an easy thing to do. After all, what industry needs hand-written documents read at scale, when so many documents today are born digital in the first place? It turns out there was one after-all: the insurance industry.</p>
<p>In that sector, claims forms, emails and invoices are currently processed manually. But CEO and co-founder Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss realised that her company’s technology could significantly reduce the time and cost spent on administrative tasks, as well as the risk of human error.</p>
<p>So today, SearchInk rebrands as <a href="https://omnius.com/">omni:us</a>, a next generation AI service with two main products aimed squarely at the insurance industry: <a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/omni/" target="_blank">omni:us <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> Claim and omni:us Policy. The idea is to be able to process digital documents, some of which contain handwriting, by classifying them and extracting the valuable data.</p>
<p>Omni:us is launching these products first in the DACH region, and claims to be working with over half of the top 10 insurance providers. It also says it can deploy its claims management and policy extraction products into an organisation within a matter of weeks. It’s now raise a total of $6.5 million from individual angels and VC, including Anthemis.</p>
<p>Quidenus-Wahlforss said: “Industry predictions show that insurance data will grow by 94% in 2018, 84% of which will be in highly variable documentation. However, in the future, there is also huge potential to apply omni:us technology to many other diverse industries such as finance, manufacturing, transportation and healthcare.”</p>
<p>She added that “We see customers improving their claims turn around time by 80% and all of that at 75% of the original costs. Why is this the case? Fundamentally, because with omni:us manual interventions can be reduced to a minimum, due to the supervised machine learning approach. One of our clients could speed up the comparison by an average 90% at only 80% of the costs.”</p>
<p>Furthermore, the AI could analyze policies with an annual value of only 250 Euro, which normally be a waste of a human being’s time and effort.</p>
<p>Omni:us is now in the process of raising a further funding round this year, opening an office in the US and growing its team.</p>
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<a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:2mJPEYqXBVI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=2mJPEYqXBVI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:7Q72WNTAKBA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=7Q72WNTAKBA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?i=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?a=LMM9Mpjs28M:BMsEa_YJ4gM:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/Techcrunch?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a>
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<p><a href="http://www.venturefriends.vc/">VentureFriends</a>, the Athens-based VC that has backed the likes of <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/20/homie/">Homie</a> and <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/23/weengs/">Weengs</a>, is announcing its new fund, with a first closing of €45 million.</p>
<p>‘<a class="crunchbase-link" href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/venturefriends/" target="_blank">VentureFriends <span class="crunchbase-tooltip-indicator"></span></a> II’ sees the VC firm pick up where its <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/03/venturefriends/">original €20 million fund</a> left off, with a remit to do seed investments in <a href="http://tech.eu/features/18161/athens-greece-startup-ecosystem-report/">Greek startups and beyond</a> that have global ambitions.</p>
<p>Specifically, the VC fund, which counts LPs as the European Investment Fund, the Greek ESIF FoF, Equifund and several individuals and family offices, is on the look out for seed-stage tech startups in its sweet spot of e-marketplaces, e-commerce, and SaaS.</p>
<p>I’m told it plans to write a company’s first cheque of up to €1 million. There’s also the option to add another €5 million to the fund, with a final closing target of €50 million, although this may not come to fruition.</p>
<p>Notably, VentureFriends’ second fund has already disclosed a first investment, participating in Stasher’s recent funding round. The startup (<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/09/citystasher/">formerly known as CityStasher</a>) is billed as an ‘Airbnb for luggage’ and offers a network of brick and mortar businesses across Europe that will store your luggage for a few hours in between commutes.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the two year-old ‘VentureFriends I’ made 21 investments during its lifetime, which feels like a pretty rapid deployment of capital. These have mostly been in Greece-based startups with an international outlook, including Blueground, a company offering high-quality mid-term accommodation for business executives ad expats. The company manages over 700 properties in New York, Dubai, Athens and Istanbul.</p>
<p>Another example cited by VentureFriends is Welcomepickups, which two years into existence is now present in 20 cities in Europe and Asia. The startup can be thought of as a travel concierge, spanning transfer services, essential products, pre-ordered tickets to top attractions, tips and tailor-made experiences led by locals.</p>
<p>The two Partners of VentureFriends are Apostolos Apostolakis and George Dimopoulos. Apostolakis previously co-founded e-shop.gr, the first e-tailer in Greece, and in 2011 he co-founded e-food, a food delivery marketplace acquired in 2015 by Delivery Hero, providing a major exit for the Greek startup ecosystem. He and Dimopoulos were also among the first angel investors in Taxibeat, the taxi app that <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/27/daimler-close-to-buying-taxibeat-in-greece-for-around-43m/">sold to Daimler in February 2017</a>.</p>
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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Techcrunch/~4/01B29ewfaDk" height="1" width="1" alt="" />... Read More